Lady Chatterley   Starring: Joely Richardson and Sean Bean Acorn Media UK RRP: £19.99 AV9735 Certificate: 15 Available 01 February 2010

Lady Chatterley, Constance, is the daughter of a bourgeois family who marries a minor nobleman. On his return from the first world war Sir Clifford Chatterley is paralysed from the waist down and unable to supply an heir to his estate. Although they dance around the subject both know that in order to have an heir Constance will have to sleep with another, though given the restriction on interclass relations Clifford does not suspect that Constance has chosen Mellors, the gamekeeper...

Lady Chatterley is a BBC television adaptation of the three Lady Chatterley's Lover novels by D. H. Lawrence. I mention three because after the initial draft was banned for obscenity Lawrence worked on the novel, eventually creating three similar but different versions of the story. The book was famously banned as being obscene for decades until the publishers were finally taken to the high court, where a jury decided that due to its artistic merit it could not be deemed obscene.

I mention this so as not to disappoint anyone looking for a salacious sex fest, which would be the 1981 film version starring Sylvia Kristel. It is true that sexuality, as a form of personal freedom, is central to both the book and the adaptation. The series has been toned down from the books, in fact I only counted a couple of f*cks and missed the use of the ‘C’ word., which in a way is odd considering the series was directed and co-written by Ken Russell, who is not normally known for his restraint.

What we have here is an excellent period drama which plays more on the breakdown of the class system and Constance’s need for freedom from the sterile, in both senses of the word, world of an increasingly irrelevant and impotent aristocracy. Mellors represents the new vitality of the post war working class, not the brutish beast that Clifford would consider him; he has a poetic and even whimsical side to him.

Russell has gathered together a great cast. Joely Richardson plays Lady Chatterley who moves from devoted wife to free lover. Though the show she slowly becomes disenchanted by her husband. In the original novels Clifford is a cold man, but James Wilby’s portrayal has an edge of mania to it, which makes him a very unsympathetic character, it’s a fascinating if odd portrayal of his character. For the show to work Mellors has to be played by an actor which can produce both raw sexual power as well as demonstrate his kinder, sweeter nature, so what better actor to get than Sean Bean. The scenes between Richardson and Bean sparkle with sexual tension. Russell appears as the bohemian Sir Michael Reid, who along with her sister does little to discourage Chatterley’s affair.

Russell has also slightly changed the role of the housekeeper, Mrs Bolton. In the original novel she was a devoted servant who idolised Clifford, just because he was minor nobility, even though her husband had died down one of his mines. In the show Shirley Anne Field is able to inject her own sexuality, so I was never really sure whether she was really supporting Constance or just trying to get rid of her so that she could have Clifford all to herself.

The story has been made into four episodes totalling a running time of 205 mins. The 4:3 picture is acceptable but does not show off the pastoral scenery or costumes to their full power. Fans of Russell will be delighted with the candid interview with the director (23 min, 48 sec), which appears to be uncut and unedited. The rest of the extras are less exciting and include a short biography of D. H. Lawrence, a list of his books, a small piece on the trial and filmographies, which only show selected films and miss out some of the artists major works, odd that.

As a drama, there is little to fault this adaptation, even if it is less of a bodice ripper than the book, but then even television has to obey the obscenity laws.

8

Charles Packer